Author
Topic: A little help (Read 986 times)

First of all, Hi everyone. I'm a long time player and admirer of ROM hacks and enjoy them quite a lot. For a VERY long time I've wanted to get involved in a community that's willing to teach me some basics until I can get up on my feet. I've noticed that the pokemon community is very well supported, multiple tools, hacks, users, etc. Which is amazing. However, as much as I like that I'd love to jump into the MegaMan Battle Network series, and I have NO clue where to even begin. I've read the threads and saw a few tools in which I might download (I don't want to clutter up my computer with tools I might not use.)I'm curious if anyone knows about possible map & event editors. I've seen the capability of modding the pokemon games. They essentially have made new games. (It's not fair to compare, I'm aware of that, but for now it's the closest thing I have.) Any help at all would be useful, I'd just hate to have the run around (I've been on reddit, TREZ, etc.) Everyone says to go around and read elsewhere, which I appreciate but it doesn't help me get started. I'm willing to read and research, so feel free to send me any links, threads, or advice.

Okay, guy, you need to be more specific than "A little help" in your thread title, like "Help me start in MegaMan Battle Network hacking" or something. Otherwise, with a vague title like the one you have now, someone who might just know about MegaMan Battle Network hacking will just skip over your vaguely titled thread, and you just messed up a good opportunity to get some useful information.

"jump into the MegaMan Battle Network series""map & event editors""They essentially have made new games"

The first thing you need to do is know very specifically what you want to do, and for a newbie I'd recommend the simplest possible thing ever and you work from there. Transforming a game is not the simplest thing ever.

I'll echo the good advice already given here. The phrase "lurk more" springs to mind. I lurked plenty before my first post, where I explained how I'd already made plenty of good progress on my translation hack.

I agree that an ambiguous title helps neither you nor other forum members, and you need a specific goal in mind. For me it was simple: I want this Japanese game in English. The more specific your goal, the easier it is to help.

And yeah, making a total transformation is probably not the best first step.

I hadn't read Inverse's statement on the "Essence of ROM Hacking". Good stuff.

Wow, that actually hits the nail on the head. It definitely applies to me, too. Like how I hacked an Atari Lynx game, not necessarily because I really wanted the change that I made, but because the idea of hacking a system nobody else had hacked, WITHOUT a debugger (but with a RAM viewer), really got me going. Hackers hack because they love to hack, not because they want new levels in some platform game.

I did a year of experimenting with fceux before I asked something in the hack ideas thread. And what I asked was if it was possible to change one byte (fix the camera in two players contra). Dougeff helped and explained how. That gave me a lot of ideas so I started hacking Super Pitfall just to have items visible, that was my only goal. Gradually it changed to completely changing the game, but I started with a very specific goal in mind.